The 4 most important questions CIOs should be asking today
Although chief information officers have been at the forefront of enterprise digital transformation efforts for years, they are still too often reduced to the company’s "technology expert." Even if the reality is different, perception counts for a lot. It’s now time for CIOs to change that perception and evolve into more wide-ranging business strategists, enabling their IT departments to leverage their expertise for high-value business outcomes.
The good news is that most enterprise CIOs already have nimble, intelligent and scalable technology to facilitate that change. What’s needed is an approach that improves efficiency and increases productivity in ways that are directly tied to company goals. Here are four questions every CIO of a B2B enterprise should be asking as they seek to maintain the momentum of their digital transformation.
Staying safe online in 2023
As Cybersecurity Awareness Month celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, it's the perfect time to reflect on the strides we've made in security education and awareness. It’s also a chance to look ahead, combining education with the right technology to protect people at scale.
Two decades is a very long time on the internet -- there was no Facebook or YouTube in 2003. Now there are more than 500 times as many secure websites. Phishing was just beginning to catch on. Now phishing is widely reported to be a multi-billion-dollar problem, with millions of attacks detected and taken down each year. As the internet has evolved, so have cybercriminals.
Twenty years of software updates
In the beginning, software ran mostly on a smart server dumb terminal networked or entirely on a local machine. If there was a defect, it was that the given program wouldn’t run. Once desktops, laptops, mobile phones and even physical devices such as refrigerators started interconnecting via the internet, a software defect could open the device to an attack or shut down a life-critical system. The very real need to stay on top of software updates has been escalating every day.
In the early 2000s, when computer malware began as a few innocent viruses before morphing into full-on malevolent worms, the software giants such as Microsoft (but by no means limited to Microsoft) denied responsibility. There was significant push back with vendors saying that compromise was only possible in only a limited number of scenarios -- almost as though the end user was responsible. Increasingly, though, it became clear that maybe the software itself could be responsible for some of the malicious activity on the early internet. And maybe the software industry needed to take that seriously.
You can't avoid APIs, so you need to secure them
As APIs emerge as the unsung heroes behind modern software development for their ability to accelerate innovation and streamline processes, it’s no secret or even a surprise that API security is a lingering problem that the broader cybersecurity industry has yet to fully solve. Since abandoning the use of APIs is not a viable option, organizations need to focus on building strong AppSec programs that give the teams developing with APIs, the structure and tooling to ensure connections are secure and software deployed is safe.
To be most effective, organizations need to prioritize designing security best practices into development workflows from the beginning and by adopting secure-by-design based principles.
How careful cloud migration can help your business tighten its belt
Today’s enterprises are grappling with a very modern IT dilemma: how to carry out cloud migration as cost-effectively as possible.
According to recent research on the views of IT leaders, more than half of enterprises worldwide (55 percent) believe a move to the cloud is "inevitable." The benefits of migrating to the cloud are now widely-acknowledged -- from replacing unreliable legacy infrastructure that hinders business agility, to providing support for modern, collaborative workloads. Many enterprises’ eagerness to adopt AI technologies is also driving cloud migration. This is because the cloud offers the computing power required to deploy AI models at scale.
Unleashing the power of cloud-based technology in the gig economy
The gig economy represents a labor market that relies on temporary and part-time positions filled by independent contractors and freelancers, rather than the full-time, permanent employee model. It has emerged as a powerhouse, with gig workers contributing an estimated £20 billion to the UK economy, which is predicted to hit £63.25 billion by 2026.
In the face of escalating living costs, gig workers are facing increased vulnerabilities in their pursuit of financial stability. A striking revelation from a study conducted by the University of Bristol reveals that a staggering 52 percent of UK gig economy workers earn below the minimum wage.
How and why we need to break the stigma around second hand tech
Mountains of e-waste, increasingly scarce resources, and volatile supply chains; these are just three of the reasons that the technology industry should be re-considering its current model of 'take, make and replace'. We’ve seen across other industries, such as fashion, that the cost-of-living crisis and increasingly eco-conscious consumers have led to the second-hand market becoming a lucrative business.
Through holding onto stigmas around the quality and performance of second-hand tech, we continue to purchase brand new despite the negative impact this is having on our planet. So, what needs to be done to see similar change across the tech industry?
The future of AI in payments is already here
The strongest case for bringing artificial intelligence-powered technology into the electronic bill payment and presentment (EBPP) space stems from the reality that, in some ways, it is already here. Many of the buzziest applications like machine learning-powered customer service chatbots and AI-written content are continually developing and still a ways off from being called perfected. But there are other ways AI tools are already quietly powering some facets of the EBPP industry.
The EBPP industry is still in the earliest stages of implementing these tools. By working to understand the reality of AI in the EBPP space today, executives seeking to find the most effective uses of AI and forecast the future of the industry can both reframe their current perspectives, and calibrate their expectations and strategies for what’s to come. The areas in which AI solutions can be most helpful as they grow more advanced may not be the most headline-grabbing, but they will make a significant impact on the industry.
Why every company should include threat intelligence in their cybersecurity strategy
In the fast-evolving digital landscape, the prevalence of cyber threats has become a stark reality for businesses and individuals. While essential, conventional cybersecurity measures are often reactive and inadequate against sophisticated attacks. This is where Cyber Threat Intelligence (CTI) emerges as a proactive and complementary approach to cybersecurity.
Utilizing CTI helps organizations to protect their systems from potential hazards. It provides a way to cut through the noise and focus on threats relevant to that specific company and industry. However, CTI is more than just a product. It's a program that needs to be evaluated constantly to ensure the correct tools, processes, and people are being leveraged as threats evolve and the company changes over time.
The quantum leap: Quantum computing breakthroughs to watch
The classical computer has been the bedrock of computing for over 50 years. That’s going to change soon. quantum computing, which was once a concept limited to fringe scientific papers, is now becoming a mainstream topic.
We’re seeing significant breakthroughs in the headlines which are stoking the flames of conjecture. The truth is, that this technology will bring with it much more than hype and opportunities to breathe life into sci-fi creations. In this article, we’re going to dive into some of the milestones of quantum computing, future goals and, of course, the challenges that we still have to overcome.
How can startups ace their vendor negotiations?
Many startup founders dread negotiations with vendors, especially when they have lean or no procurement teams. Unlike enterprises, startups feel they lack the leverage to secure favorable deals. In this economic environment, everybody is trying to conserve cash. Software expenses are the next big expense after employee expenses for startups.
During COVID, most startups spent a lot on software, and now they are trying to figure out how to cut costs by at least 10-30 percent. The CloudEagle team and I have helped several enterprises and startups negotiate with SaaS vendors. In this dynamic era of innovation and agility, startups are not just the underdogs but the disruptors, visionaries, and change-makers. They bring fresh perspectives, growth potential, and a penchant for rapid decision-making.
How to budget for an Agile environment
There are often conversations within Agile communities, about how to accurately predict how much it costs to deliver a software product in an Agile environment.
Budgeting in an Agile environment, where product delivery is incremental and the journey is shaped by feedback, that can be difficult. This is especially the case, when organizations are deep-rooted in fixed time, cost and scope -- and there may be certain conditions where this is still very relevant. Nevertheless, if it’s end user value that you’re seeking (and why wouldn’t you be?) it’s advocated to adopt the following practices and mindsets as alternatives when considering putting a cost on the deliverable.
AI for the good guys: Practical lessons for AI and cyber risk
Threat actors are early adopters. Cyber defense is brimming with uncertainties, but one dynamic you can be confident about is that threat actors will leverage everything available to exploit a target. In 2023, this means the rise of artificial intelligence-enabled attacks, from AI-generated social engineering scripts to powerful automation designed to find and exploit vulnerabilities and spread laterally through systems and networks.
Security teams, therefore need to be prepared to meet the challenge of cloud scale threats on both a technical level and an organizational level. It requires anticipating threats that exist beyond technical vulnerabilities, including, for example, social engineering and DDoS. This is part of the challenge of modern cyber security -- the attack surface comprises not just the entirety of IT infrastructure, its endpoints, and all the data it uses and stores, but also its users. It is too large to be effectively managed manually.
Conquering disruption: How to build a more resilient business
From COVID-19, the energy crisis and widespread strikes, business continuity managers have been kept busy in the last few years. And the impact of these events, as well as ongoing threats like cyber attacks, mean that continuity planning is a regular topic on boardroom agendas.
Business resilience is now crucial to guaranteeing continuity and sustainable operations. In fact, according to PwC’s Global Crisis Survey 2023, 89 percent of organizations state business resilience as one of their key strategic priorities. But what are the key factors at play in building a more resilient organization?
The vital role of multi-factor authentication in your security stack
Stop me if you have heard this story before. A threat actor sends a crafty phishing email. An unsuspecting end user clicks a hyperlink in the email and enters their username and password, unknowingly providing those credentials to the threat actor. The threat actor then uses these credentials to gain access to all sorts of personal or company sensitive information. While this may be a "tale as old as time", it’s still happening today. Literally every day. According to the latest Verizon Data Breach Report, stolen credentials is still the primary way attackers gain access to organizations.
The fact is passwords continue to be a target for threat actors and are becoming increasingly vulnerable to attack. Threat actors leverage techniques like phishing campaigns, brute force attacks, information-stealing malware, and social engineering to gain access to user credentials. End users often contribute to the problem by using easily guessed passwords or reusing the same passwords across multiple accounts making a threat actor’s job easier. The bottom line is putting your data protection hopes into a single username and password is a foolish endeavor when the need for more robust authentication controls is evident.
© 1998-2024 BetaNews, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Policy - Cookie Policy.